Iraq evacuates over 300 of its citizens from India to Baghdad, Erbil
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Iraqi Ministry of Transport announced on Tuesday that it had facilitated the return of a new batch of Iraqi citizens who had been stranded in India to Baghdad and Erbil and that all had been transferred to locations.
"The company continues to receive the Iraqi nationals coming to the homeland and transport them through its buses from Baghdad International Airport to places designated for quarantine in the capital, Baghdad and Erbil province," said Karim Kazem Hussein, the ministry's head of the General Company for Transporting Delegations, in a statement.
He explained, "Under the direct supervision of Minister of Transport Nasser Al-Shibli, teams have mobilized their efforts to serve 308 Iraqis stranded in the Republic of India and transferred 248 of them to quarantine areas in Baghdad and 60 more in Erbil province."
"The company's staff continues to sterilize and fumigate the buses used," the statement continued, pointing out "high-level cooperation with the Ministry of Health and the concerned authorities to preserve the health and safety of citizens and expatriates."
On May 3, Iraqi Airways evacuated hundreds of Iraqis stranded in India due to the suspension of flights between the two countries after the further spread of a mutated coronavirus strain has put India into a state of emergency.
The Iraqi authorities have evacuated over 400 Iraqis stranded there, those who went to India for medical purposes and trapped due to the suspension of flights between the two countries.
Government-run Iraqi Airways announced in late April that flights to and from India would be suspended as a result of the and shockingly high numbers of coronavirus infections and fatalities in the South Asian nation.
Read More: Iraq suspends flights from India amid severe COVID-19 surge
The Iraqi ambassador to India, Falah Abdul-Hassan, revealed earlier that the Indian authorities refused to transfer the deceased Iraqis to their country of origin at the present time.
Editing by John J. Catherine